The order came in August. President Trump told the Navy to work out how to put steam catapults, the machines that fling jets off a carrier deck, back on its ships. Inside the Navy, the order had a familiar name attached to it. Bill Jones. The president describes Jones as a catapulter, his word, who served 25 years and loves the smell of steam. Navy leaders tried to track him down to learn what he'd said. Defense officials told the Journal they never found him.
Marcus Weisgerber tells the story on Wednesday's front page. The chain starts early in the president's first term, during a visit to the USS Gerald R. Ford in Virginia. The Ford is the biggest warship in the world and the first of a new class. The bill was about $19 billion. The ship ran years late and billions over budget, with new technology that hadn't been proved at sea. The president asked to meet the catapult crew. As he tells it, one sailor said a broken electric catapult needs geniuses from MIT, and a steam one needs a hammer and a blowtorch. Industry officials say both lines are far too simple.
On a Thanksgiving call in November 2018, the president asked the captain of the USS Ronald Reagan which system he preferred. The captain picked electric. The president called it a very good answer, and the issue seemed to go away. It came back at a rally in January 2024 and again at a swearing-in in February 2025. In August came a national security memorandum. It asks the Navy for the cost and timeline of steam catapults and hydraulic elevators on CVN 81, a carrier expected in 2034.
Nobody makes them
The Navy hasn't built a steam carrier since the USS George H.W. Bush entered the fleet in 2009. Steam catapults have been out of production for decades, says Hunter Stires, who was maritime strategist to a former Navy secretary. Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, called a return to steam "a significant design change." He also said a February stress test showed the Ford's electric launchers outperformed steam. An administration official says the Navy needs simpler, battle-tested designs to get carriers built faster. Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute calls it a possible multibillion-dollar change that grew from one sailor's conversation. The Journal asked current and former Navy officials, lawmakers, White House aides and executives. None of them knew who Jones is. The Navy says that without a date of birth it "cannot accurately locate this Sailor in our records."
Our read
This is Behavioral, and we're staying out of the politics. The story is about how decisions get made. A vivid line from one person, hammer and blowtorch, is easy to remember and easy to repeat. A stress test is a table of numbers nobody quotes at dinner. Here the test came back in February and said the new system wins, and the pricing study goes ahead anyway. We watch the same thing happen with money every week. One neighbor lost money in an annuity, so all annuities are bad. One brother-in-law tripled a stock, so the index fund looks slow. The story is real. The sample size is one.
Here's the part of your own plan this touches. Your plan has its own stress test, the page that shows what happens to your income in a bad year or a long one. Many people have never looked at theirs. This week, find that page, or ask for it. Then make a rule. Any story that tempts you to change the plan has to beat that page, with numbers, before a dollar moves. If someone can't show you the test their idea passed, treat it like the sailor's story. The Navy went looking and came back empty. You check the umbrella before the clouds, and you check the stress test before the story moves you.